Charles C. Mann at The New Atlantis:
Water systems and their problems are as old as the first cities, and possibly older. The urban complex of Mohenjo-Daro, on the banks of Pakistan’s Indus River, arose about 2600 b.c., around the time that Egyptians were erecting the pyramids. Mohenjo-Daro was the biggest city in what archaeologists call the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization. Most of the citizenry lived in the “lower town,” a Manhattan-like grid of streets and boulevards faced by low brick buildings. Atop a high platform of mud bricks to its west was the “upper town,” sometimes romantically called the Citadel, a civic center that held relatively few people. Remarkably, there is little evidence that people in the upper town were richer or more powerful than those in the lower — Mohenjo-Daro seems to have been a surprisingly egalitarian place.
Water control was at its heart. Some 700 public wells dotted the lower city, many of them sixty feet deep. Cylindrical and lined with bricks and plaster, these wells created an urban water supply with a capacity and safety level that would not be matched until the modern era.
more here.
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